CHAPTER VIII 



AN AUTUMN JOURNEY THROUGH ARCTIC MOUNTAINS 



Shortly after the freeze-up Roxy repaired one of the 

 old Eskimo houses for us to live in. It had been built 

 of sod and earth over a frame of driftwood and the floor 

 of it was about a foot lower than the ground outside. 

 In April of the previous spring another Eskimo family 

 had been living in this house. When the sun became 

 warm the snow on the roof began to melt, causing drip- 

 ping within doors. The family then moved out and when 

 I first saw the house I looked in through a skylight upon 

 a stagnant lake covering much of the floor. New this 

 had frozen into solid ice and we went in with axes, adzes 

 and picks and hacked up the ice and a good deal of mud 

 from the earth floor under the ice and shoveled the whole 

 thing out. We then split a large number of driftwood 

 logs, each along the middle, hewed the surfaces flat and 

 thus made a floor over about three-quarters of the 

 house, the flat sides of the split logs being up and the 

 round sides resting on the ground. Had the house been 

 intended for more permanent occupation, we should have 

 made red planks by adzing both sides of the logs flat. 

 That part of the earth floor not covered by logs was 

 covered deep with a la t chips so that the ice under- 

 neath should not thaw, no matter how hot the interior 

 of the house might become. Here was one of the many 

 N tances of the usefulness of frost. What had been 



sloppy and malodorous mud in the summer was now 



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